When I was in college, I took an anthropology course about magic and religion. It was taught by a guy who looked like Santa Claus and we watched a lot of groovy videos about people tripping and going into trance......fun stuff. One thing we covered was how social groups recount their shared `history' over and over again. This creates a group consciousness or group memory. For instance, every time you get together with old friends, you reminisce about old times. With subsequent tellings, your shared `history' tends to change as people remember things differently.
I think this is one area where the right wing noise machine excels. Let's make a few assumptions:
1) Anecdotes can be trotted out for any side of an argument. Assume the tale is mostly true, but means nothing at the end of the day. Think the MacDonald's coffee lawsuit as your only case for tort reform.
2) The anecdotes tend to turn into a shared consciousness of universal truth as they are repeated endlessly. This changes people's belief despite the later cognitive dissonance they experience when their stereotypes are exploded. Think of the Iraq war through the lens of the right wing's Viet Nam propaganda.
3) These meta truths tend to influence not just the target group (i.e. nut jobs who somehow think Hannity is always right), but also infect the population as a whole through retelling by the original group. Vince Foster was murdered anyone?
I think people underestimate the power of this shared consciousness on our nation's current political discourse. There is a large population out there who will never vote for anything but republicans........................... they've drank the kool aid as we like to say. You see, they `know' the republican side is right. Their shared consciousness has told them that their side is right and they will not change their minds. However, they can be influenced....not to vote. If they do not approve of the job their side is doing for whatever reason, they may just stay home. The republicans do it to us every election. Make the dem candidate look so bad (usually by infecting the public consciousness through bizarre personal attacks) that a number of reliably democratic voters stay home.
You see, it's easier to make people vote against something than to vote for something. Remember that Hobbes believed the natural state of mankind was fear. Fear is where the shared `history' is strongest because fear is often the strongest emotion. They used fear of your hard earned money going to (insert evil group of the week here) in the form of government handouts. Fear that democratic spending will bankrupt us. Fear that if Al Gore had been elected, the terrorists would have even worse things. Fear that the `death' tax will bankrupt the small businessman and American farmer.
How do we fight the fear? We've got to go back to the basics. Shared `history' can cut both ways. We can change the narrative by repeating our `truth' endlessly. Hopefully our truth is closer to the real truth, but it doesn't matter for the sake of this discussion.
I see so many people here rail against the dem politicians in Washington for not understanding the game. Let me tell you, THEY DON'T UNDESTAND THE GAME. But they really aren't that important. They were never able to control the narrative. They are not able to control the `history'. If they had been able to do it, liberal would not be a bad word.
Just talking about issues here..... Understanding where we stand makes a big difference. As long as we exist here, they don't control the whole narrative. We should support good candidates, but this community does something more, it lets our truth live. And maybe we can infect the general consciousness in some small way until people change their beliefs. Movements are always made up of beliefs. That's where the power lies. Power lies with shared truths. Someday. Maybe someday soon. Our truth can change the world.
I am a hippie or what?